Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is Lauren Livak Gilbert, Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute. Lauren has a background in creative design, communications and marketing.  She has worked in academia as a recruiting expert, and then spent several years in a large CPG as a project leader where she carved out a niche in Digital Shelf strategy. After moving onto the software industry, she is now a leader for a community focused on accelerating B2B commerce growth.

Lauren shared many great insights including:

• Networking and having advocates who believe in your potential are critical for career transitions.
• The commerce industry requires individuals who can thrive in white space, handle rapid change, and navigate ambiguity.
• Lauren advised being proactive in learning, seeking out resources, and experimenting to build knowledge quickly in this fast-paced sector.

eCommerce and Navigating the Digital Shelf: Insights and Careers with Lauren Livak Gilbert

[00:00:05] Ron Laneve: Hello and welcome to Episode 35 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent Podcast. I’m your host, Ron Laneve. Each week we share the career stories of tech experts and marketing mavens, operational gurus, and sales leaders to illustrate how they have navigated the nonlinear career path.

[00:00:24] Ron Laneve: Today’s guest is another great example of taking the road less traveled. She has a background in creative design, communications, and marketing. She has worked in academia as a recruiting expert and then spent several years in a large CPG as a project leader where she carved out a niche in digital shelf strategy.

[00:00:41] Ron Laneve: After moving into the software industry, she is now a leader for a community focused on accelerating B2C eCommerce growth. I’m very excited to introduce Lauren Livak Gilbert, podcast host and Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute. Lauren, thanks for being here. 

[00:00:58] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Thanks for having me, Ron.

[00:00:59] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Great intro. I love that. I’m going to take you everywhere I go. This is excellent. Well done. 

[00:01:05] Ron Laneve: So Lauren, thanks for being here. I appreciate your time. I know we got to meet after a podcast I did with Justin King, who you know, in the industry. You commented on my post about the non linear career path, so I appreciate that and I’ve always wanted to have this chat, so thanks for being here.

[00:01:20] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah, thanks for having me. 

[00:01:22] Ron Laneve: Obviously, I want to talk through your background and talk about, the hows and the whys around the path you’ve taken, but can we start with what is digital shelf? What does that concept mean? 

[00:01:32] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah, of course. That is the world I live in every day. So happy to dive into that. So the digital shelf it’s all of the different touch points where a shopper can engage with a brand or discover a new product or purchase a product. And that doesn’t mean it has to be online.

[00:01:49] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Because digitally influenced sales are really important. So you might be standing in the store and browsing on Amazon on your phone and purchasing a product. So the digital shelf really expands beyond just online to all of the different places that a shopper can purchase a product. So if you’re on a brand side, you’re thinking probably the eCommerce team or the omni channel team, where you’re figuring out what are all the different channels that my shopper could purchase a product, whether they’re browsing on TikTok, or they’re going to the grocery store, or they’re shopping on Amazon or Target, that encompasses the full digital shelf. 

[00:02:25] Ron Laneve: Gotcha. So then, as a logical lead on question, what is the digital self institute?

[00:02:30] Ron Laneve: And tell me about your role there. 

[00:02:32] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah, so I you’ll probably also hear me say the DSI because that’s the abbreviation since it’s a long name But the digital shelf institute is a community of digital leaders across the industry and we focus on building a community. We focus on creating thought leadership And bringing all the digital leaders that are doing the work today together. Prior to my being there was created around 2018 with the purpose of really bringing leaders together In different organizations who are working in eCommerce So when I was on the brand side previously, I didn’t really know anyone else who was doing my job. it’s a very niche kind of job being in eCommerce or the digital shelf and so You It helped bring those people together, bring those conversations together. And also have broader conversations around digital transformation, because it’s not just about technology, it’s about change management, having the right resources, there’s so many different elements that go into being successful on the digital shelf, and so the DSI really focuses on bringing all those things together. It was created by Salsify, The tech company product experience management platform, which really brings all of the data for your product together to be able to share out to your retailer partners.

[00:03:47] Lauren Livak Gilbert: The purpose of creating it was so that we could have that broader conversation outside of technology and uplevel it to broader digital transformation strategy. 

[00:03:57] Ron Laneve: Gotcha understood. No pun intended, but let’s shelve that for now. 

[00:04:02] Ron Laneve: I want to come back and talk about that a lot more. One of the streams we got together was to talk about the nonlinear career path. Could you walk us through. From your start and then, how that progressed from, working in recruiting to working at J&J and then into software, et cetera.

[00:04:21] Lauren Livak Gilbert: This is one of the reasons why I was so excited about your podcast. Cause I talk about non linear career paths a lot. And I think it’s more the norm than anything else, but people don’t necessarily talk about it. So I love that. I always like to start by saying. My major in college had absolutely nothing to do with what I’m doing now.

[00:04:40] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I was a dance and journalism major. So I was a ballerina for many years. So don’t know how that turned out to be ecommerce, but it worked out. But I went to Rutgers university and my first job out of school was in undergraduate admissions office. So I read college applications. I recruited for the university, traveled all over the country, actually recruiting. As a recruiter, you have specific territories. I spoke to students, I spoke to parents, I spoke to teachers. It was really about finding the right fit for the university. I have to say it was an excellent first job because I learned how to network. I learned how to talk to many different types of people. You’re speaking to high school students and you’re speaking to their parents, you’re speaking to their teachers, their guidance counselors.

[00:05:28] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I really learned how to interact. I had a lot of opportunities to do some really broad public speaking during that period, which helped me hone those skills as well, because I would have to speak to auditoriums of students and parents. So I started as a recruiter and then I worked in the communications and marketing department.

[00:05:48] Lauren Livak Gilbert: When I was at Rutgers, they were really building that out more broadly and trying to understand how they could specifically target the types of students that would be a really good fit for Rutgers. Back then social was very different than it is now, but I built out their existing social channels then worked through of all the email communications and videos and such and it was a really cool rounded experience because I had the opportunity to wear many hats. I was at my alma mater so it was a great right out of college type of role. When I was trying to think about what I wanted to do next I really wanted to try a different sector because I was in higher education and I was like, what’s it like to be in corporate America, maybe have more of a global role, work with people outside of the US.

[00:06:32] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I think one of the critical pieces of having a nonlinear career path is networking and having people believe in you. So I had a close friend who worked at J and she believed in me and she knew who I was and how I worked. She gave me the chance to actually come in as a contractor, as a part of a special project.

[00:06:50] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I actually entered as a contractor on a special project management project and very quickly, very fortunately was able to be a full time employee. I started in project management. That was a great entrance because you learn a lot about the business. You learn how it works. You have to work cross functionally.

[00:07:10] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I was in a totally different world, right? Academia is very different than corporate America. It was a bit of a sink or swim moment and had a huge learning curve but it was definitely an exciting time. 

[00:07:22] Ron Laneve: How many people can make that transition? One, get the opportunity to make that transition and then two, do it effectively. So congrats to you. 

[00:07:31] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Thank you. Yeah, like I said, it takes someone who believes in you and knows you and will take a chance on you. The thing that I found is that I fit really well in that environment. I really loved working in corporate America. I’m more of a process oriented person and there was a lot of process that was involved.

[00:07:48] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I really liked that. I think it was really good for me in the beginning of my career to see different sides of business and decide where I wanted to fit. It was just so eye opening because there were just more opportunities outside of what I was currently working with. I had another amazing opportunity where one of my leaders was like, Hey, we have this thing called the digital shelf.

[00:08:09] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It’s broken. Do you want to work on it? That was my entrance into eCommerce. I had no background and I had an awesome leader. And he was like, Hey, I want to give this to you as a challenge. And first day on the job. I got a text message from the president of J&J saying, this is broken, everybody’s really angry about it here’s a picture of sad face emojis, and things on fire, and I really need you to help me fix it.

[00:08:37] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah but it turned out great, I absolutely loved it, I got to work cross functionally, with every brand from supply chain to R&D to marketing to sales, I learned so much about the business. It was a really great first entrance into e com. 

[00:08:53] Ron Laneve: What was maybe the biggest challenge to overcome, or the biggest accomplishment you are most proud of, in that initial digital shelf journey at J&J?

[00:09:03] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Oh, good question. I think for me, it was getting everyone on the same page. Like I said, when I first got into that role people didn’t want to talk to me because the process was broken. It really was, like, there wasn’t a clear understanding of why things were happening and there was just a lot of frustration because if anyone listening to this is an eCommerce, it’s complex.

[00:09:24] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I was in eCommerce before COVID where people didn’t also fully understand the importance of it and might not have been fully adopted. So I really brought an organization together, and we had a very functioning process by the time that I left, and everybody was on the same page, we were working together, and it seemed like an absolutely impossible feat when I started, but it really helped me learn how to work cross functionally, how to work with different levels of people, different types of people, how to bring everyone together to have a common goal. For me, that was a huge achievement and I’ve been really grateful to stay connected with so many of the people that I worked with when I was there. 

[00:10:09] Ron Laneve: Yeah. Not just any organization, a mega company with lots of very well known household brands, selling across many household retailers. So again, congrats to you. That’s great. So then how’d you get to Salsify? What was that connection? 

[00:10:26] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah. So I, when I was leading the digital shelf, we were working with different tech providers and Salsify was one of them.

[00:10:32] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I specifically was really looking to try again, another industry. So I had done academia. I was in corporate America. I’d never worked in tech and I really knew I wanted to stay in eCommerce. What I was seeing was that a lot of the tech companies were really forward thinking in the eCommerce space and they were staying up to date on what was changing and where the challenges were and really building technology to support that. I was really looking for a new role and I reached out and it just had a serendipitous moment where that worked out and Interviewed for the role and actually moved to Boston January 6th of 2020 for the job.

[00:11:10] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah, I know rough times but the beautiful story that comes out of this is I met my now husband in March of 2020. So it worked out but at the time It was scary being in a very small apartment knowing zero people, in a new city. 

[00:11:26] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I moved to boston and started working for Salsify and was on the Commerce strategy team. I helped brands build out their strategy for the next year, two years, three years, and just consult on what was happening in the industry and best practices and things like that. About two years ago, I transitioned into leading the Digital Shelf Institute. 

[00:11:46] Ron Laneve: What was Salsify’s, differentiator in the eCommerce arena from a product perspective? 

[00:11:52] Lauren Livak Gilbert: They were ahead of the curve. I still feel are ahead of the curve in terms of what’s happening in eCommerce.

[00:11:56] Lauren Livak Gilbert: And they were basically as a brand, when I was asking the questions, they either had the answer or they knew what was coming next. To me, that was like a really big indication of understanding what’s happening with the market and being able to help me as a brand at the time, pivot to be able to win across the board with my brands. It was also really easy to use So for me, it was an excellent tool that really enabled me to be successful at my job. Helped me build out a process do it more efficiently do it more effectively. The proof was in the pudding for me because i’d used it so I understood how it worked and I knew it was successful and I knew it was a tool that would be a really great opportunity for other brands as well.

[00:12:41] Lauren Livak Gilbert: That was really what drew me to it. I specifically reached out and I was like, Hey, I really like what you’re doing. Tell me more about some of the aspects that I don’t know. So that was really how the paths crossed. 

[00:12:52] Ron Laneve: Gotcha. Okay. So it sounds like up until then, a mix of what I’d call conscious decisions to make a career change and a company change some serendipity, obviously, and having great networking connections that has to happen. That’s just that’s how all good people find good jobs through good people. So to DSI was that a conscious decision to make a new move and, go into this, community, again, I’m going to use the wrong words, community management, very content rich role.

[00:13:24] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It was actually something that was presented to me. So no, it was not a conscious decision. It was, hey, we want to build this out, we want to have a broader strategy. We think you would be perfect for it. And. It actually is a perfect job for me. It’s just it pulls in all of my different skill sets and A lot of my focus was really understanding How you take all the different puzzle pieces of a digital transformation and fit them together. It was a natural progression for me. It wasn’t something I was necessarily looking for, but it was perfectly created at the time that I was looking to do something new.

[00:13:59] Lauren Livak Gilbert: So I really wanted to focus on research and thought leadership. I love that aspect because most of my days are spent talking to brands. I talked to brands in the space. I talked to thought leaders. What are you thinking? What’s working? What’s not working? How can we do some research and build a best practice or a framework?

[00:14:16] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It really tied in the things that I loved about working on a brand and the things I loved about being on a commerce strategy team and put them all together in a nice little box. Gave me the opportunity to continue to work with brands and partners and retailers and agencies to really help define what we should be doing in the space.

[00:14:36] Ron Laneve: Now here’s where we circle back around to that thing we put on the shelf before.

[00:14:39] Ron Laneve: what are the latest trends in B2C eCommerce from a, from a platform or solutions standpoint?

[00:14:46] Ron Laneve: What does the future hold? And then I’m gonna, I’m gonna blend that into how that’s impacted by talent in my next question. 

[00:14:55] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It’s a complex space, right? The things that I am working with brands on and actually right before this had a presentation that this was one of the questions working as an omnichannel organization is one of the biggest challenges across the board because traditionally companies and I’m talking about the big CPG companies.

[00:15:13] Lauren Livak Gilbert: They were brought up as in store companies, right? They sold in store, wherever their products were sold and they’re pivoting to an eCommerce mindset. A lot of them are doing that really well, but their infrastructure is not built around that. So you have sales functions, marketing functions, supply chain functions that operated for in store selling.

[00:15:35] Lauren Livak Gilbert: How do you pivot that to online selling? It’s not an easy change. And that Influence is reporting structures, goals and objectives, budgeting, how things hit the P&L Operating as an omnichannel organization is one of the biggest challenges that I see brands faced with today. Because it’s goes into every fiber of our business. And these are processes that were established hundreds of years ago. How do we rethink it? Rework it, make sure the right people are involved in the conversation? That’s really hard to do at a large company. There’s a lot of people that are involved. That’s a really big challenge that I’m seeing across the board today. 

[00:16:14] Lauren Livak Gilbert: The second one is around data. There is no shortage of data. In commerce, there’s POS data, there’s retail media data, there’s content data, there’s all kinds of different data sets. But what’s challenging is what does that data mean? What is it telling you? How can you actually take an action with that data and match it all together so it tells a story? So if you know that someone purchased something online, do you think that they went in the store to buy it? Did they actually purchase it online? Did they discover it on social media?

[00:16:48] Lauren Livak Gilbert: All of those different pieces need to come together to tell a story and the brands have that data, but they’re having a hard time beating it together, matching it up because data is complex and there’s a lot of it. I know the fancy two letter word of AI is a big theme that everybody talks about. I think that will be an enabler to help solve a lot of these challenges. I don’t think it is the silver bullet. I don’t think there is a silver bullet. I would say data and operating differently are the really big challenges today. 

[00:17:20] Ron Laneve: Those are great answers. I appreciate that. That actually seeds my next question.

[00:17:24] Ron Laneve: I think a lot of college students or early career people at least in technology, think about working for a SaaS company. I want to go work on some cool product or going to work at a big marketing agency and being in services. It doesn’t feel like people are talking about going into commerce, at least earlier in their career from my perspective, but from your perspective, you’re living and breathing this every day. What do you see are the greatest opportunities from a talent perspective in the commerce space? What paths would you suggest for individuals earlier early in their career for positioning themselves for these opportunities? 

[00:18:01] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I think there’s a huge opportunity in commerce, mostly because there is a level of expertise that is needed to do well in specific areas. If you want to be an Amazon expert, you need to just focus on Amazon.

[00:18:17] Lauren Livak Gilbert: And I say this a lot, but eCommerce has only been around for about 31 years when you really think about it . You don’t have people with 20, 30 years of experience being able to support a lot of the needs of commerce. So there is actually a talent shortage and expertise level, I would say, in the younger generation of people coming out of college and learning commerce and getting into the swing of things.

[00:18:46] Lauren Livak Gilbert: But there’s a huge opportunity, because you can learn Amazon in a year or less than a year. You can become an expert and being an expert in commerce is different than being an expert in something like making this up supply chain. Because if you’re an expert in commerce today and then you set it and forget it, you will not be an expert in commerce tomorrow.

[00:19:07] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I think that’s a complexity with recruiting talent in commerce as well, where a lot of people write these job descriptions and sometimes they’ll ask me what do you think? You’re not going to find anyone with 10 years of experience in this. You are okay with two to three, as long as they’re competent in what they’re doing.

[00:19:24] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It also takes a kind of mind shift for the HR departments and the recruiters to really understand the eCommerce space. If, anyone is interested in this there’s now college majors around commerce. They’re evolving a lot more and they’re teaching you those skills, but you can also learn on your own online.

[00:19:46] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It’s just so much easier than it previously was. I would say there’s a huge demand for it. Every single brand that I talked to is like, we need an expert in this technology or we need an Amazon expert or we need someone who knows how to do X, Y, Z. My belief is that the future CEOs and leaders of large companies are going to come from people that were in eCommerce.

[00:20:13] Lauren Livak Gilbert: They are going to understand the business at a different level. They’re going to see more of a holistic business strategy. I think we’re grooming those future leaders, but we need more people who are growing up in commerce. Starting their careers in commerce, understanding the importance of all of the different elements to be able to build out the larger teams that are going to be needed to support things likeCommerce.

[00:20:40] Ron Laneve: Might be redundant, but slightly different. What are you seeing are the biggest challenges for these companies in finding this talent? 

[00:20:49] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Think it’s a couple different things. I think the first one is education. It’s actually funny you asked that question because I’ve actually had teams reach out to me and say, Hey, can you come talk to us? Explain what language we should be using what the acronyms mean the acronyms in this industry like any industry there’s so many. I think there’s an education gap because the recruiter, the HR teams, they need to be able to ask the right questions. If you know what you’re talking about, you can lead through people who might not understand truly how things work in commerce. So definitely an education gap, which I think is super important to fill in.

[00:21:26] Lauren Livak Gilbert: What is eCommerce? What is Amazon? What is Walmart? What’s happening? What do you need to know? What are the different elements of it? I think there’s that. To your point, there’s no clear major that can really define if you’re an expert in commerce. I’m a little bit different, but like journalism and dance, like who, what, how would that tell you anything about what my expertise was? I learned through doing, and I think it’s a chicken or egg thing.

[00:21:48] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Because you want to get the expertise to get the job, but you don’t have the expertise, so you can’t get the job. But I think There are some colleges that have an eCommerce major. I’ve seen that kind of being more built out. There is more of an omni channel major.

[00:22:02] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I think you more need to look for the characteristics of someone who would fit in the Commerce space. That’s things like being agile, being okay in white space, being okay with change. There’s a lot of things that change very rapidly in commerce. If you’re someone who doesn’t like that. It is not going to be a good space for you. Depending on if you’re in a technical role or not having the technical acumen like being okay to play around and test things out and try new things. Resiliency is a huge factor in this industry. I know that might be hard to interview for but that is definitely something that is super important because we are the change makers in commerce, like we’re doing something different than has been done.

[00:22:51] Lauren Livak Gilbert: You can sometimes hit a wall and sometimes it can be frustrating, but if you find a community like the DSI, you can talk to other people who are doing it. 

[00:22:59] Ron Laneve: Does DSI have any content or resources around coming up to speed in commerce or training or, some of the things you mentioned earlier?

[00:23:10] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Yeah, we have education courses that talk through some of the basics of eCommerce and they’re free. You can take those courses if we’re interested in those. We actually did a piece of content on for hr teams around what to look for and what Commerce professionals might be asking for in terms of the specific types of roles. We try to also educate the hr teams when they’re trying to recruit for these types of roles. It’s usually remote. It’s usually a little bit more flexible.

[00:23:38] Lauren Livak Gilbert: There’s just some elements around what that profile of person is looking for. We have some things to support that as well. 

[00:23:46] Ron Laneve: All right, last question. It’s my new bonus question. How are you leveraging AI these days and for what? 

[00:23:53] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It’s funny you say that because I listened to Justin’s podcast and I started downloading that amazing tool that he mentioned, Cast Magic.

[00:24:00] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It is Very cool. I do not use that yet, but it is on my short list. I use chat GPT a lot. Especially to think about like ideas or just spark new thoughts about specific concepts or even to just gather some of the information that already exists in the ether around a specific topic. It’s really helpful for brainstorming amazing topics for research reports or webinars or things like that.

[00:24:25] Lauren Livak Gilbert: So for me, that’s really where I use it. I use it. Also, my personal life from an efficiency standpoint if I need to plan out meals or if I need to plan out specific emails that I need to write I use this example a lot. My baggage got lost. I had to write an email to United and I actually use chat GPT to write the email. Just things like that from an efficiency standpoint, that’s really where I spend a lot of my time.

[00:24:49] Lauren Livak Gilbert: I do a lot of creative fun stuff on the side. So I use Adobe spark a lot to create images and things like that just quickly and easily, and they can come up with some cool ones that I couldn’t create myself. 

[00:25:01] Ron Laneve: By the way, I was a biology major years ago and now I’ve been a technology recruiter for 25 years.

[00:25:06] Ron Laneve: So you know you’re preaching to the choir. 

[00:25:09] Lauren Livak Gilbert: But I see, I love stories like that because I think when you’re in college and even when I was in recruiting there’s a lot of pressure about picking your major or picking what you want to do with the rest of your life. That’s really not what college is about.

[00:25:23] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It’s about learning to be an independent human. It’s about a slow transition into the real world, managing your own schedule, meeting other people, having different experiences. It really doesn’t dictate what you need to do for the rest of your life. But I feel like the fundamentals of knowing how to hold a conversation, looking someone in the eye, shaking their hand. I think a lot of those get lost and. Those are really the elements that matter. I saw it a lot in college recruiting. It’s really important in networking as you go to conferences and you work in this space. I say this in commerce. I think in professional life, just going back to the basics, like knowing how to be a good human, knowing how to have a great conversation, following up, saying, thank you, being transparent.

[00:26:08] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Those are really the skills that matter. I don’t think they’ll ever go out of style in my opinion. Those are the things I think that are important.

[00:26:15] Ron Laneve: Yeah. And learning, I think my biggest takeaway from college was learning how to learn because to your point, when you go into something like eCommerce and you don’t have a background in it, it’s you’re fed to the wolves. You have to figure stuff out right away and you’re analyzing everything and et cetera. So cool. 

[00:26:30] Lauren Livak Gilbert: It was trial by fire. Oh man. I did a lot of reading. I read a lot of there, the DSI existed at the time. I read some DSI content. I talked to people, I asked questions. Being scrappy is something that you have to be in eCommerce, but it is a space that you can quickly pick up and understand the concepts.

[00:26:49] Lauren Livak Gilbert: If you want to go really deep, it might take more time, but definitely picking what makes sense and what you like. But it’s a really fun space. It’s always changing, always something new. 

[00:26:58] Ron Laneve: Awesome. I appreciate this. I haven’t got to talk to somebody, except for Justin, who’s been a leader in the eCommerce space. So this is great. I’m excited to get back into it. So eCommerce, thanks for your time. 

[00:27:08] Lauren Livak Gilbert: Thanks for having me, Ron. 

[00:27:09] Ron Laneve: All right. Talk to you soon.

August 20, 2024